Saturday, October 25, 2008

I am delighted to share some good news with you! Troy Davis received a stay of execution based on a new last-minute appeal filed this past Wednesday to the federal appeals court in Atlanta. As a result, he will not be executed on Monday, October 27th, as originally scheduled.

Your action has succeeded in putting a spotlight on Troy's case worldwide and bringing about this victory. At least 300,000 individuals have written letters in support of Troy. Additionally, prominent leaders such as former President Jimmy Carter, the Pope, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu have all called for justice in this case. . . .

While we pause to celebrate this good news, we cannot forget that Troy still faces the very real possibility of execution—despite the fact that no physical evidence tied him to the 1989 murder of a police officer in Savannah, GA, and that 7 of the 9 eyewitnesses have since recanted their testimony. . . .

We now await the decision of the federal appeals court, which will determine whether Troy's case warrants a new hearing. We believe their ruling could happen at any time during the next month. . . .

Barack Obama, the first black major-party nominee, is positioned to win the largest share of white voters of any Democrat in more than three decades, according to an exclusive Politico analysis of recent Gallup and Pew Research Center polling.

The most recent two weeks of Gallup polling, which includes roughly 13,000 interviews, show 44 percent of non-Hispanic white voters presently support Obama — the highest number for a Democrat since 47 percent of whites backed Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Frozen River is an unflinching brutal portrait of the desperation and struggles of the lower class in America, and Melissa Leo pulls out all the stops to show that brutality for every wrinkle, stain, cigarette, nickel and dime that encompasses it. Unlike the movies of David Gordon Green which attempt to touch upon the American white underclass but always leave everything with a tinge of music video fetishism, Frozen River allows no room for the stamp of MTV prettiness or indie pop culture fetishism of the working class. Nothing about the characters in this movie is hip and cool. Nothing about them will sell blue jeans or pop music. This is a brutally real portrait of the struggles of those who are invisible living under the hammer of capitalism and its economic cannibalism in America, and I suggest you get out there and see it.

“Right now,” said Mr. White, the head of the American National Socialist Workers Party, “we’re facing the potential of a half-black candidate financed by Jewish money going up against a white candidate financed by Jewish money, who are both advocating the same policy. So you’ve got two terrible choices.” . . .

“What we really haven’t seen is white supremacists really rallying over an Obama presidency,” said Mark Potok, the director of intelligence at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups. “Hate groups are in a more or less stunned position right now; they haven’t been able to figure out how to proceed just yet.” . . .

“There’s a real problem,” Mr. White said in the interview last month, “in what’s called the ‘white movement.’ One, there’s a lot of people who are just mentally ill, and we deal with those a lot. No. 2, there are people who have serious sexual problems.”

These cases are among hundreds examined by The Plain Dealer in an effort to gauge whether white defendants get different treatment than black defendants in the criminal justice system. The newspaper focused specifically on drug cases, which not only dominate local court dockets but also are characterized far more than most violent or property crimes by judgment calls and policy decisions at virtually every level of the system.

The analysis was done against a national backdrop of questions about the racial justice of America's decades-long reliance on law enforcement to stamp out drug abuse.

Two reform-minded organizations -- The Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch -- made essentially the same case in separate studies earlier this year.

Despite data consistently showing that far more white people use crack cocaine, powder cocaine and other illegal drugs than black people, both groups noted, it is black people who overwhelmingly dominate the ranks of those who are arrested, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned for drugs.

Cleveland -- where records show a black person is nearly four times more likely to be arrested on felony drug charges than a white person -- is no exception.

And since 2000, a black person has been 12.7 times more likely than a white person to be sent to a state prison from Cuyahoga County on drug charges.

2 comments:

As someone who grew up in Cleveland those numbers do not surprise me at all. Racial profiling is extremely common in the area. In 2007 I was pulled over by a cop who claimed he was looking for a stolen vehicle, a black Honda. I was driving a green Ford. After seeing my license and registration he said "this car can't be stolen because it belongs to you", no ticket was issued. I have short hair and was wearing a tank top, he probably thought I was a black male when I drove past.

What? This article doesn't indict police as much as it criticizes the court system. Everyone knows that these lawyers work out back room deals all the time. I do have a problem when the racial breakdown of black users vs white users is thrown out to illustrate the disparity in jail population. The fact is that most people are incarcerated for sale of drugs and possession of large amounts of drugs, its not the users that are in jail. Look at the numbers. Thanks, Think for yourself